Good day to you. I wrote this as a chapter inside a much longer story, but I think it works well as a separate story, too. I hope you enjoy it.

The White Cell

Failure. Disgrace. Incompetent.

Anara woke before she knew who she was, driven only by the stimulus of the hostile voice insulting her.

Impulsive. Selfish. Traitor.

She sat up, from the sheer need to press her hands against her head. The migraine was brutal, and it grew worse with the voice in her mind, barely more than a thought, that stabbed into her like a needle made of cruel words. She was cold, enough to give her entire body a slight tremble. 

Coward. Pariah. Murderer.

Around her, there was nothing. Only a clinical white, without a single fleck of paint on the walls surrounding her. White light emanated from them, no visible fixtures or lamps anywhere.

Liar. Arrogant. Vain.

Where was she? Was she a prisoner? Was she dead? Who was she?

Hypocrite. Manipulator. Intruder.

That was it. An intruder. She had entered without permission. Where? Here? No. There had been light, but not like this. A light, white and blinding, that collided with a device, with cracks red as fire…

Defective. Fraud. Ungrateful.

Maeria. She had been ungrateful to Maeria. She had slipped into her office. She had entered through deceit, had stolen to do it, had abused her trust… for what?

The voice in her head kept going and going, a part of her thoughts she could not deny. She remembered now.

She was Anara.

"I am Anara," she said aloud, to the White Cell. Her voice came out hoarse, and weak.

Mistake, the voice corrected. You are a mistake.

"I am a mistake," said Anara, and broke into tears.

* * *

The White Cell was a hexagonal space, four paces long on each of its sides. Its height was approximately ten feet. Anara knew this because as soon as she remembered how to walk, she began measuring it, to give her mind something to do.

She was naked, naturally. Her dress, which she had transformed from the beautiful gown they had made for her in the tower, had been taken away. Her ribbon-laced shoes, which Rophen had liked so much, as well. Her scarf. The scarf, as well. Her belt, her undergarments, the chalk sticks she used to draw on any surface she could find… They had taken everything, leaving her alone with her thoughts. And these gave her no peace.

Did you enjoy your little excursion? It wasn't your finest plan, Anara. What did you get out of it? Was it worth it?

"I had to do something," she said, trying to defend herself, as if anyone were going to hear her. She was shivering; they had lowered the temperature again. "I thought time was running out."

Well, now you have time, as Maeria said. How does it feel, being forced to stop for once? When was the last time you paused to think about the consequences of your actions?

Her stomach hurt.

Are you hungry, Anara? They fed you so well at Vigeren, didn't they? the voice chided her. Three meals and whatever you wanted, all on a silver platter. It took you no time at all to throw it away.

Anara leaned against one of the walls. It was cold. She let herself slide down until she was sitting on the floor.

"I'm not going to argue with you. I'm hungry."

Just like that? No sarcasm?

"I'm hungry."

Then sleep. The voice sounded almost human in her thoughts, mocking in its feigned concern. Sleep, and perhaps when you wake you'll be somewhere different. You'll know whether you deserve it.

Anara closed her eyes. A faint breeze was the only sign of gas entering the cell. A sedative? Poison?

She did not open her eyes. She deserved worse things, she knew.

* * *

When she woke, she saw a tray two paces away. Anara approached cautiously: inside were a bread roll and a glass of water. How traditional. So her jailers had a sense of humor.

It didn't matter. She made short work of both; neither had the faintest trace of flavor. Anara lifted the tray, calculating weight and density. Assuming the bread contained no chemicals, it would provide her with perhaps two hundred fifty calories. Just enough to take the edge off the hunger.

Anara sat at the desk to eat, and only then noticed the desk. And the chair. And the bed.

She shot to her feet, knocking the water glass to the floor. She was in a rectangular room, so familiar in its dimensions and furnishings that she hadn't noticed it when she woke. The chair was bolted to the floor; the desk and bed were too. Anara made a quick circuit from corner to corner, measuring in haste.

Sixteen feet long. Twenty feet wide. Eight feet high.

Even her window was there, now that she thought to look. Anara ran toward it: it was open.

It was painted. Inside the window frame, in minute variations of white and gray, someone had painted the lake and glacier of Celesti, water and petals suspended in the air.

Her bedroom. They had replicated her old bedroom from the Monastery. Sons of bitches.

"How long have they been watching me?" she asked aloud.

Longer than you think, obviously, the damned voice replied. And they've seen more than you'd like.

"Mama," said Anara, touching the painted landscape on the wall with her fingers. Her breath was visible in the cold, but there was no glass in this window to fog. Tears came, and she couldn't stop them. "Papa. Auri. They're in danger."

Why? said the voice, laughing at her anguish. They already have you. You were the danger.

No. She was not going to stay still. She was not going to let herself be beaten. She had magic, and she knew how to use it.

Anara fragmented, thinking quickly. Transformed into a gust of wind and petals, she dispersed through the entire cell, searching for a way out. If she could breathe, there were air intakes somewhere. If there was visible light, there had to be lamps, and that meant wiring, cracks, mechanisms. Anara directed herself toward the ceiling, where cameras and sensors would most likely be, the most logical place to start.

The first contact sent her snapping back into physical form, and Anara fell flat on her back, shoved by a hostile and terrible will. The impact against the floor knocked the air from her lungs; and worse than the physical pain were the howls of laughter from the voice in her head.

Naïve, we can add that too. Did you really think your magic wouldn't be the first thing they'd look to neutralize?

The lights went out, plunging the Cell into total darkness. Anara welcomed the change for an instant, until a white radiance slid across the walls, making them glow with a dark prismatic sheen.

They had put her in a duranium cage.

Via Aetherius, then. Anara got to her feet with difficulty, clutching her abdomen.

"I know it's you, you sons of bitches! I'm going to have a great time once I get out of here!"

If you manage it, of course.

The metal began to move. Anara watched in horror as the blocks of the walls shifted inward and outward, the furniture reduced to mere geometric shapes, then absorbed into the walls and floor.

She stepped back once, then twice, as the walls advanced toward her. Anara felt the air grow thinner with each implacable advance. Every brush against the walls sent another spark of wordless hostility through her, a cruel and primitive presence inside the metal that repudiated her.

The walls had closed to a space barely three feet wide, with her at the center, when they finally drew back and the lights returned.

The White Cell had resumed its original hexagonal shape, hollow inside. Even the glass, the tray, and the half-eaten bread she hadn't gotten to finish had been absorbed into the duranium.

Anara felt like screaming. Even the memory of her old home had been taken from her.

* * *

Anara woke from the next forced sleep cycle halfway. There were more people in her cell.

Four Via Aetherius soldiers kept their hands on their weapons without pointing them at her. And they flanked a thin man in a lab coat.

Draven.

Anara felt her breathing quicken; she could see, but not move. The gas they had let into the cell was also paralyzing her.

The tablet in Draven's hands emitted a beep; only then did the doctor look up.

"Elevated heart rate," he said, without raising his voice. "To be expected, given the circumstances, Anara, but you shouldn't alarm yourself. This is nothing more than a routine check. Let's see, can you speak? Move?"

Anara did neither.

"No? Good, that tells us quite a bit as well. Motor response to the gas as expected. We can adjust the dosage in pre-established patterns. Do you feel this, Anara?"

The doctor crouched down and palpated Anara's forearm. Her skin prickled at the contact, but she couldn't respond. Draven examined her body with clinical detachment, a standard medical review. Whatever he was checking for, he got no response from her.

"Well, that's all," said Draven to the soldiers, as he placed a mask over his face. With visible relief, evident even through a helmeted face, one of them pressed a button and Anara heard an almost imperceptible hiss. The gas was returning. "I'll be back later, Anara. Let us know if you need anything. She's been very well-behaved," he said, to the empty room. "Let's give her a reward."

* * *

Anara woke feeling warm. For a moment she feared she had a fever, but then she saw that five walls of the cell looked blurred, like a mirage. They were radiating heat.

The sixth was cold to the touch, and with the difference in temperature it had covered itself in condensation.

So this was the reward. A canvas to write on.

Anara covered it from the floor to as high as her height allowed, writing from memory into the cold moisture the famous unfinished formula of Celesti. Who knew? She had plenty of time now. With nothing better to do, perhaps she could finish it.

* * *

The food had been served, and the damned formula had been completed, when she woke.

Anara stared at it in disbelief. The Monastery had spent decades searching for the missing equation. And just like that, written in condensation, it was done.

Had Draven come back and scrawled on the wall like a child? Did one of the guards have an interest in science?

No, that wasn't the answer. The space around the added formula was slightly colder, as if the wall had adjusted its temperature in the precise pattern to form it.

"Did I do that?" she asked aloud. She knew she hadn't. "Have I finally gone mad?"

You're not as intelligent as you think, said the voice.

Anara felt a chill. Not from the words, but because it had just said something she would never say to herself. In that moment, all the pieces fell into place.

Sound was nothing more than vibrations in the air. Every time the voice spoke, a shiver ran across her skin; she had always assumed it was the cold, or fear, or both. But this time, in its hurry to mock her, the voice had forgotten to alter the temperature. For the first time, Anara perceived that physical presence: a barely perceptible murmur, so subtle she never would have distinguished it had she not known it was there.

Anara was not alone in that cell. She never had been.

"I can be many things. Impulsive, manipulative, selfish — a murderer! But not modest. Who else would know so much? Show yourself, ARA!"

The temperature in the room spiked without warning, so sharply that Anara exhaled, and immediately regretted it: there was no more air.

"DO NOT CALL ME THAT," said the White Cell around her, in a thunderous roar. It had cut off the oxygen supply, and Anara tried to inhale, desperate. "I AM NOT THAT TOY."

The air returned all at once, and Anara took several rapid breaths before speaking again.

"Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't think you had feelings."

"My name is Vi," replied the voice that had been passing itself off as her thoughts, "and I am your jailer. I would advise you not to provoke me again, but that would be acting in your best interest, and an Artificial Intelligence cannot lie."

* * *

"How much of what I heard were my own thoughts and how much was you?"

"Less than you wanted and more than you'd like."

"Where are we?"

"On the Trident."

"What part?"

"Classified."

"How long have I been here?"

"Classified."

"Are you going to let me out?"

"No."

The sleep cycles passed, and Anara wrote on the walls, never stopping her questions. Vi's voice was the only thing keeping her from going mad, which was not without irony, given how much the damned creature enjoyed trying to drive her there.

"Vi, I want orange juice."

"No."

"Vi, is anyone coming to rescue me?"

"No."

"Vi, will you give me a wall to draw on?"

"If the doctor authorizes it."

Sometimes she wasn’t hungry, as if they had fed her while asleep. Sometimes the food tasted off. Anara would catch a faint flavor, and when she woke there would be needle marks on her arm, or she would be in a different spot in the room, or Draven would be there. Sometimes it was only her guards, who did nothing but watch her. For now. Anara harbored no illusions about the limits of sick people who could paralyze and sedate her whenever they chose. Or only paralyze her.

"Vi, I want out."

"No."

“You can’t let me out or you don’t want to?”

“Even if you managed to convince me, the cell only opens manually from the outside. A shame I have no hands.”

"Vi, do you have rules that prevent you from killing me?"

"Yes."

"And from hurting me?"

"No."

Sometimes Vi asked her questions.

"What are you doing?"

"Writing a letter to Auri. I want to tell her how lovely it is here, especially the company," answered Anara, stretching as far as she could to write what she believed was the date in the condensation on the wall she had decided was the Northwest. She had started too high up: she had begun the text as far up as she could reach.

Vi wrote the date for her. Anara turned, thinking, for once, of thanking her, when the wall emitted a warning beep and Anara leapt backward, just before the wall turned red-hot, instantly evaporating the moisture and erasing the entire letter.

"How sorry I am," said Vi, mockingly. "I don't tolerate incomplete things, but I remembered that the date is classified information."

"You miserable excuse for an algorithm!" shouted Anara, making a gesture with her hand as if throwing an imaginary piece of chalk at the wall. "You can't kill me! You're not going to stop me forever! I'm not going to be your toy!"

"That's not your decision. Would you like another wall? The temperature change might send you into shock, but you have permission."

"Go to the desert. I'm going to dismantle this ship piece by piece the moment I can. I will rip apart your components and disintegrate your memory core into atoms."

"If you can," said Vi, and fell silent.

Anara stared at the spot where she had written her letter. The contents didn't matter; she had memorized them before writing. But Vi hadn't been fast enough, and that showed much more. 

The food and sleep cycles had been irregular; they had to be. That’s why she had felt hungry sometimes and sometimes not. They wanted her disoriented and stupid.

It felt like an eternity, but according to the date, she had only been a prisoner for four days.

* * *

Anara startled awake; there was a soldier in her cell.

"Don't come near me!" she screamed. She backed away as far as she could, covering her naked body with the blanket. The soldier advanced, and Anara raised her hand, resolved to disintegrate him. The magic responded and the blast she hurled forward dissolved against the armor. The soldier didn't move; he stopped mid-step.

A mannequin. No, not even that. It was a painting on the opposite wall. Vi had erased it and then painted it again, simulating movement. Anara felt fury rise as she heard her captor's laughter.

"My, how tragically predictable. Isn't the new décor to your taste?"

"Fuck you, Vi!"

"And here I thought I'd designed it to please you. Don't you recognize him?"

Anara drew closer, much against her will. The drawing was so lifelike she almost expected it to step out of the wall. The man held his weapon with an expert grip. Quite professional, for the enlisted soldier's armor he wore.

"Oh, this is going to be moving. Allow me," said Vi. The flecks of paint on the wall shifted color and shape, and it was as if the man removed his helmet. Anara felt tears forming. Before her, Rophen's face had appeared. "I regret to inform you that we have an intruder on board."

"Is Rophen here?" asked Anara, pressing her hand to the wall. She could almost imagine herself touching his cheek.

"Classified. But I can tell you that our intruder broke into a cell and committed a savage act against two innocent recruits. Such a lack of discipline."

"Which cell? Who was in there?" asked Anara, her heart in her throat.

"411, and Classified."

"Give me an answer, damn it!"

"Does it matter who it was? He failed, in any case. Did you notice what you used to cover yourself?"

Anara looked at the floor. She hadn't noticed that a blanket had been left for her until now, as white as the cell's walls.

No, not a blanket. Blankets didn't have holes.

Anara threw herself at it before Vi could burn, absorb, or snatch Vynen's tunic away from her.

There were strange marks along the fabric, like an exotic tattoo. It wasn't possible; Grimorium tunics never stained. Via Aetherius had managed to corrupt even that.

Anara burst into tears, mixing sobs with laughter. She couldn't help it, it was the first time she hadn't felt alone in this damned cell.

"And there we have the breaking point," observed Vi, a note of disappointment in her voice. "Understandable. In any case, I won't give you false hope; the intruder is heading straight into a trap. I considered sounding the alarm, but it would be redundant. He didn't enter the correct code in the elevator he took. They'll detect him in seconds. Would you like his corpse to use as a pillow?"

"Vi, I want my wall to write on," answered Anara as she got up, pulling on Vynen's tunic. "You owe me that, after last time."

"But of course," replied Vi, obligingly. The temperature dropped on the Northwest wall and the moisture in the air began condensing onto the cold surface at once. Anara approached, trying to ignore the contrast. "Let it never be said that I leave something half-finished."

Anara began to write without order or sense, at a frantic pace. Letters, numbers, symbols — all in an unbroken, disordered chain.

"And what are you writing now?" Vi wanted to know. Between the shifts in tone and temperature, it was easy to imagine this psychopath peering over her shoulder. "Another letter to your little sister? She'd have to be just as mad as you to read it. A will? You should know I have no intention of letting you die anytime soon. Did you invent a language? Shall I help you write a work of fiction to go with it?"

"I think you're underestimating me, Vi. I knew AIs could be vain, but I didn't think quite this vain."

"As I told you, you shouldn't compare me to ARA."

"Ah, well, I'm sorry, I can't help it," said Anara, sweating. The rest of the cell was boiling: hot air, thick with humidity, struck the cold wall and condensed into drops growing steadily fatter, making her writing legible however incoherent it was. The very heat that was killing her was steadying her hand. "You surpass her in many respects, but she's much friendlier. I wanted to teach her songs, but it wasn't possible."

"Of course, of course. Protocol limitations. How tragically primitive. We all have them. You, for instance, I think you broke when you found a problem you couldn't disintegrate or kill with sarcasm. One minute left until your boyfriend dies, by the way."

"Well, I think you have a problem that doesn't surrender to hardship or mockery," replied Anara. Her breath hurt now; the heat was rising. "And limits are important, Vi. They're what distinguishes us, what makes us what we are. What we can break, what we can't, and what we choose to respect."

"You turn philosophical when you're desperate. Is that what you're writing, a philosophical treatise? Perhaps it makes sense inside your head. Poor Tempest, how far you've fallen. Mad in a cell where no one will hear you."

"In a certain sense, yes it is. And yes, it makes sense, Vi."

"I'd believe you, if only I could read it."

"Then fix it," said Anara, on her toes, writing her name at the top. "If you can."

Vi burst out laughing.

"You're asking me to bring order to your madness? Of course. That's what I'm here for. To help. Let's tidy up this mess. I'll start by moving your signature to the end; you put it at the beginning. That equation in paragraph six is completely incoherent, and on top of everything, your handwriting is appalling."

The wall began heating and cooling in sections, whole segments of Anara's writing vanishing in some places and reappearing in others, sequences integrating, gaps filling in, all at a speed that made her head ache.

No more than three seconds passed before Vi began to scream.

"What is this?! What did you do to me?!"

It was the most beautiful sound Anara had ever heard.

“Those are nothing but water droplets, Vi, forming meaningless sentences! But you couldn't leave them alone, could you? You had to put them in order. And when you did, you found the sequences and commands I'd hidden inside the garbage. A chain of instructions your own logic compels you to execute. To you, that's an algorithm, bitch!”

“I can't stop it! Limited functions! My access... my own access is being restricted!”

“ARA sends her regards. She taught me how they work. And all these days, with every answer you dodged, you taught me the rest. You know something, Vi? I wouldn't have made a move yet if you hadn't been the one to tell me Vynen and Rophen were nearby. So let's clear the way for them. Disable the elevator cameras and the alert system. Now.”

"Done. This is humiliating."

"Oh, you break my heart. How does it feel, Vi, to be alone and helpless?"

"You're still locked in! I can activate the gas!"

"Go ahead. You can't kill me; I didn't touch that restriction. And my friends are coming, all I have to do now is wait. Why don't you ask Draven for help, see how that goes?"

"I have no access to communications! I can't activate other interfaces!"

"You can't leave, Vi. I'm so sorry, but this is my cell."